1 of 4
KATHERINE POCLARI
John McMillan talking to students about their experience in the gardens.
2 of 4
KATHERINE POCLARI
Greenhouse that houses gardening supplies and produce year-round.
3 of 4
KATHERINE POCLARI
John McMillan talking to students about their experience in the gardens.
4 of 4
KATHERINE POCLARI
John McMillan with students of Homewood City Schools.
A community garden has become an integral part of education for the students of Homewood City Schools. Teachers have been made a point of including the garden in unique ways, which helps students gain a deeper understanding of what goes into harvesting produce and how it can apply to more than just food production.
“[There is] a science and enrichment class, so they come out during class time. When they’re doing their soil testing it ties into science and ties into math,” Director of Communications, Merrick Wilson said. “We even have classes that come out here to use the tomatoes for cooking classes when they’re making spaghetti sauce.”
Commissioner of the Alabama Department of Agriculture and Industries John McMillan visited the garden and had the opportunity to meet the students and educators that work to make the community garden such a success.
“These programs are important because you all, for the rest of your lives, will remember this,” McMillan said to the group. “[You] will remember putting a seed in the ground to get an edible product.”
McMillan also took the opportunity to discuss the importance of every student understanding where food comes from, seeing that advances in farming and technology have become more prominent. There has also been a large increase in processed foods and mass production to keep up with the nation’s growing population.
“Less than 100 years ago, almost 40 percent of the American population lived on the farm. It took about that many people, percentage-wise, to produce the food that we consumed as a country at that time,” McMillan said. “Today it is 2 percent, and we need a whole lot more food for a whole lot more people.”
Despite an increase in processed foods, there are still plenty of organic and healthy options when shopping for produce. However, the food that we get from grocery stores is not as fresh as it might appear, especially if the produce was not locally grown.
“When [produce] gets shipped from California, it spends 3 to 5 days on a truck,” McMillan said. “It takes a lot of resources to get something from the farm gates to our dinner plates.”
The students of Homewood City Schools are given several opportunities to learn this process through the hands-on learning of planting, weeding and harvesting the vegetables and fruits that are grown in the garden, which is an easy walk from the classrooms.
“In the summer, we have a program that students can apply for, [called] Seed To Plate,” Wilson said. “They come out and plants things, and at the end of the camp, they have a cookout.”
This summer program is one of many ways that Homewood City Schools works to make local gardening a fun and educational activity.